Bertz

Yeah I think this is largely where I'm at. - We NEED a playoff starter. Ideally it's a multi-year guy, but a rental like Mize or Gray wouldn't be the worst thing in the world - We NEED another closer caliber arm. Love Palencia but that's now three arm injuries in the past calendar year. Add in the velocity and we're on relatively high TJ watch with him. The current bullpen, disaster against Toronto aside, has largely managed to avoid catastrophe. IMO that's because we still have guys out there who are useful *in certain matchups.* We need another matchup proof (ish) arm to join Palencia and Webb because to increase the odds that by the time October rolls around we've got a couple of them. I'm trying not to get too attached to names but Luke Weaver feels pretty perfect here - Speaking of bullpens and matchup guys, a generic high velo sinker/slider righty would really round out the group we have. We are flush with guys who provide a quality matchup against lefties. Thielbar/Milner/Webb are guys who are always nails againsy lefties and intermittently effective against righties. There's also depth in Pomeranz/Bummer/Martin, and in the playoffs presumably Steele and Peterson will be in the bullpen. Against righties though that's where the depth has been really cleaned out. Tyler Ferguson is no joke probably our best right on right pitcher right now and even after some convalescence will still be way too high Beyond that I feel pretty comfortable, at least until we get some more bad news. Kind of like how you framed it there's a handful of roles where I don't know which specific name we'll be writing in by October but I feel confident that we'll have name(s) I want to write in.

I'm going to be curious how much pitching they add at the deadline. Like literally from a number of bodies standpoint. - There's some definite quibbling you can do but the bullpen is down at least 4, arguably 5 guys - The rotation is down 2, and our depth has been slashed as well. Worth noting if/when you bump Rea for the rotation he's gotta go to the pen as opposed to Iowa - Some reinforcements are fairly close. I don't think anyone is due back before the ASB but I think all of Taillon, Palencia, Milner, Maton, and Riley Martin are due back before the deadline? - Presuming no setbacks, and we're on pretty high setback alert with two of these guys obviously, Brown/Cabrera/Steele all look like mid-late August returns - Not a ton of prospect reinforcements left in the tank at Iowa, but Jaxon Wiggins would be a pretty ideal September callup and Will Sanders is probably not too far from being considered part of the big league team's depth - It'll be late but sounds like Shelby Miller should be back before the end of the season. We haven't heard a peep about Harvey but presumably since he didn't go under the knife (yet) he's not down for the full year - We have the old dogs in Pomeranz, Bummer, and Hendriks at Iowa. Pomeranz actually looks fairly promising We have a number of guys who are optionable, and a handful of guys we might not want back at all. But the flipside to the "we have a full pitching staff on our IL right now" not-so-fun fact is that, aside from Horton, they're all slated to return at some point. At least as things stand currently.

Hendriks and Bummer both followed. Bummer had somewhat encouraging velo but poor results, Hendriks had pretty good results but disappointing velo

The uh...wait this can't be right...Iowa bullpen is pitching well? - Drew Pomeranz with a scoreless inning. Fastball averaged 93.3, more than a full MPH over his season average. He hasn't had a game with his FB sitting north of 93 since mid April - Colin Snider also with 1.1 clean innings. His fastball sat 94.3. Nearly a tick and a half over his 93.0 season to date mark and right in line with his 94.2 back when he was good in 2024 - Zac Leigh threw 2.1 IP (!), got 9 whiffs (!!), and somehow averaged 95.2 even over such an extended outing (!!!)

Not the biggest headline from today's game but I was just thinking we're now approaching two full calendar years of Amaya hitting really well. Excluding today's game where he got on base 3x, he has a 117 wRC+ going back to 7/7/24. Because of his injuries last year it's not a full set of PAs (415), and Statcast has some reservations, but dude is good. He's even fixed his throwing arm which was a major problem early in his career.

Jostin's arm angle gives his FB great shape and makes it punch way above its raw velo That said it still looks like a fairly reliever-y profile and 15 feels pretty rich to me. He's certainly not above any of Caple, Sanders, or McGwire, like come on now.

Oh my god lol

Good for them. I just treated it being Rojas/Ayers as a foregone conclusion but I'm guessing team needs overrode that. Excited to see McGwire in front of Statcast

You don't have to go digging terribly deep for a season where Taillon gave up a million dongs in the first half and simply stopped in the second half. Hell last year it even corresponded with an IL stint for a leg injury. I think Taillon is probably true talent not that different from Rea and Assad. And we know Rea/Assad play up in the bullpen. I'd probably have Taillon in the rotation until the deadline if we're being honest.

Yeah I think he's legit. I wonder if he's a guy you won't want facing tough lefties? And Craig bringing Rolison in tonight shows they're not super confident in him against lefties either. But he looks good, the results have been great, and the stuff models both have hard-ons for him. We just desperately need to get back to a point where he's our 6th or 7th best reliever instead of our 3rd.

I am curious how long Conrad plays in AZ I suspect with all the time missed it's going to be a slow burn at MB. Even if he's OPSing like 1.200 there's no Cam Smith style march to AA on the table I'd think. But do they take it slow even in the ACL?

I would probably ideally be in that bottom right quadrant. Not so much to reflexively ape the Rays. but that just logically feels like the right move when you consider how both fragile and necessary pitchers are.

My point was less about not having resources to make moves, and more that we're not locked into one guy as our trade bait. Like the team more or less had to move Caissie or Mo before this season, and it was pretty obvious they liked Mo more. Now there's a good argument for moving on from a bunch of guys: - Shaw and Rojas would have to play corner outfield where their bats aren't as fun - Pedro is even less likely to have a COF caliber bat - Mo's looking more and more like a catcher but now he has Ayers nipping at his heels - What Ayers is doing is super exciting but is he just baseball Billy Madison? - If you think Hartshorn is a 1B with good not great power you might never be able to sell higher - Is Kepley early career Steven Kwan or is he 2026 Steven Kwan, ditto above you might never be able to sell higher This might be a positive. If let's say half the league didn't like Caissie, then that's half the league you can't get a controllable SP trade going with. But at the same time if we treat MLB pipeline grades as gospel we probably don't have anyone except Shaw as valuable as singularly valuable as Caissie was last summer, and Shaw's presumably our starting RFer next year so moving him would be a Peter/Paul deal.

S.A.N.D.E.R.S.

I'll be interested to see what the approach at the deadline is. Last year after not being able to get the Marlins or Nats to play ball Jed went with a "depth-maxxing" play and punted on getting a playoff starter. Does this year go similarly, or are there enough differences to lead to a different outcome? - The team is more acutely in need of depth than it was last year. That's not at all to say they couldn't use impact, but I think it's even harder to poo poo Soroka/Kittredge types - Last year aside from the Twins the teams selling were all prolonged bottom feeders that had mostly been stripped for parts already. This year I'm sure 1-2 of these teams will get back in it but the Mets, Tigers, Bosox, Jays, and Orioles are all at least 5 games under .500 and were very much not supposed to be. The Angels and Giants appear to have truly bottomed out, and the Astros are 3 games under. "How much of a hardass is Pete Pendix feeling like today?" is not as load bearing of a question on this year's market, at least as it sits today - Last year Gore and Cabrera trades got punted to the offseason. With the lockout honestly teams probably can't count on being able to get big deals like that done over the winter - Last year's Cubs were slated to lose Tucker and a bunch of relievers to free agency, and that was it. The scariness of the "roster cliff" has subsided to an extent, but that's very much not the case this winter. Feels like this point combined with the one above should force some action on a cost controlled SP? - Last summer Jed had Owen Caissie, the ~50th ranked prospect in baseball, more or less burning a hole in his pocket. This team still has plenty of young position player depth, but no one as obvious as Caissie I am in the spirit of plan for the worst and hope for the best expecting something in line with last summer, probably a bit better of a rental SP than Soroka both for availability reasons and because they don't need a Willi Castro. But I do think things are materially different enough that we shouldn't just throw our hands up and say "if it didn't happen last year why would it this year?"

Nice! Really glad we'll have these guys in front of Statcast every game going forward

Yeah I was definitely guarded for something like this. This was one of the few times I checked an ACL game live instead of after the fact.

I'm not sure if this is new or something that's been true for a while, but Conrad is listed as active on the ACL Cubs bench.

I am almost certainly Alcantara's biggest cheerleader at this point so I'm biased but yeah he's been crushing it. Last two months at Iowa: 144 PAs, .315/.410/.573, 148 wRC+, 13.9% BB rate, 26.4% K rate, 8 homers

Yeah probably Shaw to the IL, that's a shame Shaw had some runway and was producing That said unlike last time Alcantara was up there are some actual lefty SPs on the docket over the next 10 days so hopefully he gets a chance to shine.

Yeah I feel like Wilson was more solid than anything yesterday. He got some good fortune, and probably doesn't miss enough bats to consistently put up 0's. Though the Brewers are a very high contact team so maybe he gets a few more whiffs against some softer lineups. That said Craig clearly likes having a long guy in this vein and this is also the type of arm Hottovy tends to get the most out of. I'd be very surprised if he doesn't make it until at least the ASB. To your point if they dump someone just to get a fresh arm up here it'll be Roberts (for Antoine Kelly?). Wilson makes it to the TDL I'd suspect.

I mean, feels like it probably should? Once a decade there's a Posey or a Rutschman but in between there's mounds of Henry Davis, Joey Bart, Kevin Parada types. If you told me that college catcher was a worse performing draft demographic than high school pitcher I'd probably believe you.

I wonder if the team considers piggybacking Shota and Assad tomorrow. The bullpen is shredded: - Webb has worked 4/5, he's definitely down tomorrow and honestly you'd probably try to avoid him Tuesday as well - Wilson is obviously down - Rolison only threw 23 pitches, but over two innings plus he warmed up in last night's game - Roberts has worked 3/4 so he's down - Ferguson has worked two in a row so you'd like to stay away from him - Wicks didn't work that hard today, but as a career SP how confident are we feeling about him working back-to-backs right now? - Thielbar and Thornton are fine Meanwhile Boyd and Rea are lined up to go Tuesday/Wednesday no sweat, and there's an off day Thursday to let you line up the rotation a little bit.

There was obviously some good fortune for the pitchers today but Bryse Wilson looked solid and Ferguson continues to look great.